The Final Four has been determined for the NCAA tournament. (I hope your bracket doesn’t look anything like mine!) To try to reward the best teams with the easiest path to the Final Four, the tournament committee seeds all 64 (now 68) teams. The idea is that you will get a high seed if you have been one of the top teams all season.
While there are always upsets, for the most part, the top teams continue to win. That is, after all, why they are the top teams.
Econompic Data carried an article about the win rates for the top seeds. Below is their graphic showing the seed level of all of the teams to get to the Final Four since 1997.
Source: EconompicData (click to enlarge to full size)
As you can see from the data, more than 80% of the Final Four teams were one of the top four seeds in their division. In effect, for the most part, the Final Four teams were a subset of the top sixteen teams. If you start to think of high relative strength securities as top seeds you’ll see where this is going.
Every now and then a dark horse slips in, but most teams have been top teams all year. Winners keep winning.
